Notices by Ed (peepstein@mstdn.social)

@evan not really. It’s normal at the end of wars for borders to move; it happens all the time and civilians end up displaced and/or living under different governance situations. But in general, most civilian preference is to exit the war zone as soon as possible. Some examples where that doesn’t happen very well, eg the partitioning of India and Pakistan, results in huge civilian population shifts and civilian deaths (two million deaths in that case). Is Hamas v Israel like that?

@timbray yet in most every war, it’s absolutely normal for each warring party to evacuate its civilians to protect them. Yet that doesn’t seem to be happening here for the most part (there are exceptions). Why do you think that is?

@blaine @Gargron I don’t think you realize the minefield here. Remember a few facts: APIs cannot be copyrighted, a federation of computers on the public internet is not an own-able thing, and an organization has to be extremely deliberate in order to avoid a name becoming a generic trademark. “Linux” is not Debian nor SUSE nor RedHat, but all of those things are definitely Linux. So good luck with Mastodon, it’s probably a lost cause.

@Gargron @blaine you don’t get to control that. Mastodon has become like “Kleenex” instead of “facial tissue” and it is very possible that it a court of competent jurisdiction takes away some of your rights to control how “Mastodon” is used. If enough people do use the term “Mastodon” to mean to “Fediverse”, eventually you will lose your trademark rights.

@blaine @Gargron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark

@lxo being given compiled binary code while not being given source code is not abuse. It’s offensive to people who have suffered real abuse to use such language. Anyway we are clearly not going to agree on this so I am finished with this ridiculousness it’s very simple: don’t use GPL software if the license does not fit your use case. But also don’t claim that the GPL has anything to do with Liberty when Liberty means fewer restrictions on lawful behavior.

@lxo yes you’re right. I was going to edit my post earlier to change copyright to the right to reproduce likenesses of the sculpture but I couldn’t be bothered. My point doesn’t change. Most reasonable people would expect the right to produce copies would rest with the sculptor alone, not alongside the entities who made the sheet metal.

@lxo your first sentence describes a false analogy. You cannot compare physical harm with a weapon and access to a tool in general. One reason is that the prohibition on harming someone applies equally to all member of society at all times, while copyleft licenses do not. One does not need to receive a knife in order to be given the admonition not to do harm. However copyleft restrictions apply only in the case of distribution of compiled software.

@lxo should every entity in the supply chain of that metal be entitled to the copyright of the sculpture? I say no they should not. In the world of copyleft, the given sheet metal comes with a condition that controls the lives and choices of the artist, saying that any sculpture that is made from the metal must become the property of everyone else who was involved in the supply chain. This makes zero sense in the context of freedom. It is the exercise of Power. Not Liberty.

@lxo I think it is you who are confused. If I control my life, then when someone gives a tool to me, I should be “at liberty” to use it how I want, no? Once it is handed to me, I take it home, I “am free” to do with it as I wish? Give it to someone else for free? Sell it to someone else if I wish (this happens all the time in society)? An artist is given some sheet metal, they turn it into a sculpture, they sell the sculpture for money…

@xek @msw with all due respect, from a moral and legal perspective, copyleft licenses like the GPL don’t provide freedom to users. The only person(s) whose freedom is preserved is the copyright holder. This is something that the vast majority of people just do not understand. An instructive example of this is grsec. Copyleft licenses restrict everyone but the copyright holder in a meaningful way. Free licenses like BSD provide no meaningful restrictions.

@evan @splicer this tells me that the polls on mastodon aren’t accurate reflections of anything. There’s no way at all that this is reflective of the bell curve in human nature. A reminder that unless a survey is created according to scientific and statistical best practices, the survey is meaningless.